Britain's most senior judged has insisted that he will not allow “personal sympathy” for people with severe disabilities or even public opinion to sway him as he considers a landmark legal challenge to the ban on assisted suicide.

Mr Lamb said having freedom to end his life at a time of his choosing could help him live longer Photo: Christopher Pledger for the Telegraph

By John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor

3:18PM BST 13 May 2013

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said he and his fellow judges were “acutely aware of the desperate situation” faced by people such as Tony Nicklinson, the “locked-in” syndrome sufferer who starved himself to death last year after losing a right-to-die case.

But he said “only basic principles of law” could decide whether or not there could ever be any relaxation of the ban on assisted suicide.

He also challenged lawyers brandishing opinion poll findings pointing to strong public support for a change in the law, questioning how it was relevant, adding: “The public may change its mind next week.”

He said the case could not be decided “on the basis of opinion polls”.

Lord Judge was speaking as he, joined by the Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson and Lord Justice Elias, began to hear submissions as part of a wide ranging Court of Appeal challenge to the UK’s laws on euthanasia.

The case first brought by Mr Nicklinson has been taken over jointly by his widow, Jane, and Paul Lamb, a severely disabled former lorry driver, who were both in court.

They want the judges to allow doctors or others who help someone wanting to die to be able use the old common law defence of “necessity” – usually applied in cases of self defence – to fight subsequent charges of murder.

They also argue that for some people suffering chronic pain but unable to end their lives without help, the ban violates their basic human rights, denying them “autonomy” and “dignity”.

The case is being heard alongside a separate challenge by another “locked-in” sufferer named only as Martin”.

His lawyers are urging the court to widen the recent guidelines from the Director Public Prosecutions which enable close family members who help someone travel abroad to take their lives to include strangers motivated by compassion.

During his opening submission Paul Bowen QQ, for Mrs Nicklinson and Mr Lamb, said that the DPP’s recent guidelines had effectively “decriminalised” assisted suicide.

He argued that up to 3,000 people a year may already be dying as a result of covert euthanasia under the guise of pain relief.

And he dismissed arguments that a relaxation of the law would open the floodgates to euthanasia, insisting that the Britain had already “crossed the Rubicon” on the issue of suicide many times in the last 200 years, when the bodies of people who committed suicide were denied a Christian burial and interred under the public highway rather than in a grave.

He also challenged the refusal of a lower court to interfere with matters it thought should be left to Parliament arguing that some cases were “so hotly disputed that the courts must step in”.

He said that her was not arguing for an “untrammelled right to suicide” but that there were some people whose pain was so unbearable and who are unable to end their lives themselves that the ban n assisted suicide but a “disproportionate burden “ on them – condemning them to “suffer in silence”.

But Lord Judge warned the court that he could not be swayed by personal sympathy.

“We are acutely aware of the desperate situation on which the applicants find themselves and we are very sympathetic,” he said.

“But you know, and they surely do, that we can’t decide the case as a matter of personal sympathy, we have to decide it on the basis of principles of law after hearing your arguments.”

Mr Lamb, speaking outside court, said having freedom to end his life at a time of his choosing could, conversely, help him live longer.

“It would be something in the background, some as and when something I can call upon,” he said.

“Having said that it would probably give me peace of mind enough to prolong my my life really, because otherwise I am constantly [thinking], if I do want to end it how on earth can I do it without getting anybody into trouble.

“I want my wishes to be respected, that’s all I want – to be respected.”